Dwell
by 1Past and Present1
Summary: Dreams, the dying mechanism of memories.


Written for exercise. Figured I'd post it.

* * *

"Whisper?"

She groans, writhing in a cloying sheen of sweat, arousal and tears, fangs sinking bittersweet, salty delirium into her lower lip, hips hefted upward before collapsing, rising, falling again in spasms.

Tangle had meant to quickly and quietly depart from the guest room, assuming an erotic dream of some sort, but she was drawn here by the sobs interspersed within and she cannot make herself leave when the irregular but persistent utterances of grief pull her toward the figure beneath the sheets. She wants to help.

It seems strange, even unsettling, how the Wisps keep their distance, their gazes and gestures advising that the lemur keep away from the wolf.

"No." Amethyst eyes lovingly sympathise, alight with the realization that that this has happened before, but at that time, there wasn't someone around to help, or if there was, that someone is now gone. "She's suffering. I can't leave."

This they know, but they know other things, things they'd tell if they could get Tangle to put on the mask.

"I've gotta save her. No time." With this said, she brushes them aside before heroically descending upon Whisper.

The body is hot to the touch.

"Hey, buddy, can you hear me?"

Another groan, higher, yet still subdued. Like that struggle for self-control will never relent, even in this rebellion of motion and sound.

"It's okay. You're okay. I'm here."

Pointed ears fixate on a distant voice that is familiar, but strained. So many voices have been familiar and strained and torn from throats too soon.

"I'm here, now. The Wisps, too. You're not alone. We're gonna pull you out."

A mouth hangs open, tongue battering against teeth, scraping sinuously against a fang's curve.

"Darling, you're dreaming." Tangle's head is filled with that musk she knows, but it's toxic, now. "Wake up and it'll stop."

Suddenly, the wolf's claws clamp upon the lemur's wrist, unknowingly aggressive, rougher than intended, causing some hurt.

Frightened, but brave, Tangle bites down on a squeak and soldiers on. "You gotta fight it and wake up, okay?" She tries not to look too hard at any specific details that might derail her mission, but it's so easy to linger on bodily language, both painful and pleasured. "Wake up. Wake up for me, okay?"

Those claws trace bone and skin and fur, travelling upward, raking harsh red lines.

"You can do this. Or…"

They delve into a shoulder, distracting momentarily.

"Or you'll have to ride it out and I don't think you really want to."

Yet Whisper doesn't seem entirely willing to wake. She seems to resist the allure of consciousness, forsaking reality for whatever dreadful fantasy that wracks her. Accepting punishment, very likely, for something she perceives as a failure or a fault of her own. Maybe she's reliving a memory.

"You're having a bad dream. It's just a dream but I know it feels real, it feels like everything. I promise, it's not. You're only dreaming."

Her struggles are weakening, her pain and pleasure are subsiding, steadily, now.

"And I need you here, with me, in the real world. I need you to wake up. Please." Tangle cradles the wolf's anguished face, breathing these breaching words into her forehead with urgency, jostling with gentle insistence. "'Cause I'm worried about you and you're scaring me, okay?"

At the mention of someone being afraid, someone familiar, somehow, like a friend or a lover or a kindred soul, a layer of the illusion is broken. Fear is a word and an emotion and it inhabits an inward dimension of taut chains and skewering things, a place kept inside that eats like a disease, a bloated, festering parasite. No one should go, there, and that place shouldn't spread to everywhere else until the world becomes an invisible jail cell. She doesn't want to cause fear, let alone suffer it.

"Whisper, you're gonna be fine."

Womanly brows buckle, trembling hopeful bewilderment between familiar, calloused hands.

"Just come back to me. I've got you. You're safe."

"Mmmph…"

"I won't leave you alone with this, okay? You just need to hear me… and I'll guide you out of it. Okay?"

Claws scrape the outline of a bent arm again, trailing down, then up, once more raking over a shoulder to grip for reassurance and leverage alike, as faculties fall back into place, almost awake.

"That's it," the lemur urges, "good girl."

"Ugh."

"I'm here, darling. And I'm so proud of you. You just need to push a little more and–"

"Claire…"

Tangle deflates.

Whisper is on the fringe of being awake as she gasps, then murmurs, "You're here," before coming undone, pulling hard, forcing the slender body closer against her own, a desperate embrace as the pain and the pleasure become indistinguishable in their intensity, drawn out in moments of frantic clinging thrusts before a feeling of peaceful impending emptiness, the knowledge of a coming end, takes their place in waves of slowing movements and quietening sounds, lapsing gradually away, but not stopping, not silencing, not yet.

It feels like an ongoing eternity in which the lemur doesn't resist at all, doesn't make her identity known, their foreheads touching, her heart hammering against the wolf's, hammering through their pressing cages, whilst Tangle's soul resides somewhere between excitement and dejection.

Whisper seems to have waited for some time to experience some sort of release. Perhaps something that had been broiling over the years, now overflows. Her lashes flutter and blue eyes emerge in tortured ecstasy not quite gone, yet, her lower body exhausted, offering its meager muscular tremor in the dying throes and cascading tears, her arms only tightening their hold as she, about to cease, kisses the mouth she assumes is Claire's, wanting to seal the better parts of the way she feels with the woman she loves, unseeing of the wrongness of colour despite her stare delving into widening amethysts.

Tangle's brain explodes with stars.

The Wisps are suitably appalled.

But her need for air wins out, eventually. She sucks it into her lungs, making a harsh noise that seems to not be appropriate for Claire.

The wolf gently pushes against those lips, wanting to ask something, only to behold amethysts bleeding through the fog and the confusion, becoming identifiable.

Tangle chokes on her own tears as Whisper's smile dies up close, the wolf's expression dawning with recognition and, eventually, disappointment.

"You…?"

"Sorry."

The wolf suddenly lets go, allowing the lemur to timidly peel herself away, drenched, confused and unwillingly nursing a pounding between her thighs that begs to be given indecent attention.

The Wisps don't close in, just yet, though they want to.

"I'm so, so sorry."

"What…? How? I don't–"

"I didn't mean it."

"Why?" Whisper asks, slowly sitting up, as if kicked in the gut and recovering, drawing the blankets closer to her bosom to cover nipples visibly erect.

"It just happened. You thought I was her and it happened and I didn't stop you and I'm sorry." Tangle can't believe this is how she sounds, these things she's saying to someone she loves. "I thought you were having a nightmare and I wanted to help wake you, but…"

The wolf is the audience to a string of mostly unintelligible, muttered apologies and requests not to be angry, not to leave, it's still dark out and cold.

The lemur is becoming increasingly unsettled, harder to understand.

"S'fine."

Tangle clamps her mouth shut momentarily, glancing from the door to Whisper to the Wisps and back to their caretaker.

The wolf's eyes are closed, now, her anguish less pronounced, dulled with resignation.

"It's true!" the lemur cries softly.

"I believe you."

"I thought you were having a nightmare, so I–"

"S'fine."

"No, it isn't!"

A surge of fresher humiliation and heartache make Whisper close her eyes even more tightly.

"I wasn't… I didn't mean… I screwed it all up, again, dammit!"

In place of an answer, she reaches to turn on the bedside light.

Tangle cannot hide and she shrinks away, like a habitually kicked animal afraid of the master's boot.

But the wolf is exposed, too, and hastily drags her palm across her face to dry any tears.

"God, please, don't hate me."

"I don't," is the muffled reply, before the hand falls away, exposing the grimace it leaves behind.

"I'm not a pervert or a freak or–"

"I know."

"I'm so sorry and I wish I could undo–"

"Don't worry about it. I'm fine."

With a final toss of the head, the lemur whimpers and says, "I just wanted to help," toward the bedding.

Whisper doesn't reply immediately. "You did…"

Tangle bites her lip, sniffling.

"Nothing wrong."

She is seated in an awkward heap beside the wolf, amidst the onlooking Wisps.

Whisper is gazing into the pool between her legs, soaked through.

Time passes.

"Should I go?"

"Yes."

Tangle nods with injured misunderstanding, preparing herself to leave.

"But don't."

She freezes.

"I want you to stay," says the wolf in her husky, gentle undertones, her body shapely and exhausted.

"How could you?"

"I dunno."

Tangle's wrist is clasped, again, but this time with Whisper's better known gentleness.

Time passes.

"I'm sorry."

"You're the victim, here."

"Your sheets." A shy shifting of legs, thighs parting further. "I, um…"

"Dude, please, I don't mind, not at all."

"Promise me you'll listen, and believe me."

Amethysts roll aside, briefly exploring the pool, then shyly drifting upward, gleaming, vulnerably tracing beauty.

"You're a good friend, to me."

"I try. Even if I get it all wrong."

"Nothing's wrong. You did right by me, tonight. Thank you."

"I did?"

"You did."

"You don't hate me?"

The wolf giggles faintly and the lemur is encouraged by this.

"Not even a little bit?"

"No, not at all."

"Wow."

Whisper tugs on that wrist and Tangle comes closer, nostrils keenly inhaling that sensual musk, to rest her cheek coyly on the wolf's shoulder.

"That's better."

"You sure?"

"Yes. Stay here, like this, for a while."

"Okay."

The Wisps drift closer, now, sensing that it's alright for them to nuzzle against the women, garnering a few caresses on their heads and pecks on their brows.

"Aw, kids." Calloused fingertips play with soft, grasping limbs. "You guys were freaking out, huh?"

They seem more like themselves, now, growing swiftly more eager to receive affection when it indicates no hostility.

"So…"

"Mm?"

"It's actually, like, three-ish in the morning."

"Really? Shit."

"And if you want me to stay, then… I can hang around, keep you company, maybe, until you go back to sleep. I geddit if that makes you uncomfortable, though."

"Don't mind. But don't wanna sleep."

"What would you like to do, then?"

"Be with you."

The lemur knows these words are really intended for Claire, but says nothing, nodding instead, cheek grazing.

"And…" After a brief interval of thought, Whisper adds more firmly, "Clean myself up and drink wine," with a smile drained of its soul.

"Damn right," Tangle mutters through a rueful smirk.

The pool is cooling, exposed to the air as it is.

Time passes.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

Hours have passed in quiet conversation and alcohol and cuddling with Wisps in clean sheets with washed bodies.

"For being such a selfish jackass."

"Selfish?"

"Yeah."

"How so?"

"I think I was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"I wasn't the woman you wanted and that hurt. As if my pain could possibly hold a candle to yours. So, I'm sorry, pal. For the kiss, too."

"It's…"

"Complicated?"

"My past. Claire, she… I was…"

"You obviously loved her, dude."

"I did, yes."

"Still do."

"Mmhm."

"You're a wonderful person."

"You, too."

"I dunno if I could love someone the way you do and still stay sane."

"She's gone, but my love didn't go with her. It's here and it's alone, inside. Isn't that madness? Holding onto something that isn't there?"

"God, darling, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." Claws sink deeper into the thick fluff and tight muscles of a slender back, large hands having slipped, sometime, to reside beneath the tee-shirt. "Not your fault."

"Still, I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

Delicate, feminine kisses are delivered upon a broken brow, unknowingly echoing of memories in which Claire would open her arms invitingly and Whisper would willingly become small for her, small enough to curl up in the howler monkey's embrace as they hid themselves from the others, exchanging delicate kisses like these, but not quite, because beyond the smoke of a dream, or a memory, Tangle can't be someone else.


End file.
